


The Almost Sister

by bmouse



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Dwarf Culture, Dwarf Gender Meta, Gen, Sibling Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 01:38:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bmouse/pseuds/bmouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dis always assumed Thorin would have children first. A series of sibling vignettes. A little out of order and a little out-of-step with canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Almost Sister

Dis always assumed Thorin would have children first. Thorin would marry and continue the Line with the same calm capable ways with which he executed his duties as Heir. The life of a ruler was a fettered one - some might even say a sad life, given over to service and responsibility but somehow Thorin had been born so perfectly whittled to the role that on him it sat easily. On him the chains of duty seemed glittering and light - ornamental. Thorin was a jewel and "Heir of Durin" was his proper setting.

Sneaking out to see her bright-haired miner Dis felt her own fetters chafing for the first time. Some stubbornness in her resented the inevitable outcry. For Mahal's sake, she was only the second spare and she was a week away from crying "to the blasted heights with it!" and telling father that she would court and marry regardless when Thorin had dragged her to one of the upper balconies after breakfast and whispered wild-eyed: “Brother, I think I'm in love."

The Dragon, when it came, ate houses and crushed children but what Dis would really like to slit the greedy bastard open for was never learning that person’s name.

\- - -

“My youngest brother will lead the third division. They will come around the lake and pincer the enemy after our first charge.”

There is a meaningful silence from Balin.

"My lords, forgive me. I meant to say ‘sister’, of course."

She's barely showing, won’t have to take her armor out for months but Thorin's such a stickler for tradition. It will be among her greatest achievements. A woman who bears recreates by her will Mahal's miracle and Dis is going to be equal to the task but now she realizes with a small pang of un-dwarfish melancholy that she'll miss having Thorin call her “Brother”.

After the battle this is the least of her problems. She has twoscore dead Orcs and no husband and Thorin has no one he can call “Brother” again.

\- - -

Thorin keeps clipping back his beard after Azunbazar, Dis doesn't.

"It gets in my way. The towns of Men have over-tall anvils."

Dis fixes him with a flat state and mentally curses how father would always overindulge Thorin's dramatics. Now that he's King-in-Exile there's no stopping him.

"A sideways scale braid works just as well" she dangles hers in front of his brooding face. It has a nice heavy weight tied to the end to make swinging it rakishly over her shoulder easier. It's a tad scandalous - a fashion for bar brawlers that she's fifty years too old for, but her children are near-grown and she can do what she likes with her hair. Eerily enough the short beard makes him no more vulnerable in those strange foreign towns and he knows the best way to make his sister laugh is to tell a story about the latest woman of Men who approached him with a basket of self-bent cutlery, seeking amorous favors.

Funny, she'd have thought the cheekbones would give him away for sure.

\- - -

At least Thorin always comes home.

"Sleep well, Dis. I'll take this little ruffian tonight."

"Goodnight, Sister" she whispers daringly. 

By the light of their precious few candles, Thorin is the very image of maternal affection. He's holding Kili's head up as the little dwarrow chews sleepily on one of the ragged braids Fili had put in his hair that morning.

Dis braces herself for the inevitable rebuke. Thorin is always clinging to the fraying threads of who they were before, as if protocol is equal balm to everything they’ve been through but all he does is smile wryly, shaking his head as he steps out of the light and into the other room

\- - -

_No! Leave my children alone you barren old hag!_

Dis’ teeth are clenched tight, imprisoning terrible words that chip and hammer and nearly chisel their way out.

_For greed of grandfather's treasure you would steal mine!_

In her thoughts she recognizes a similar kind of madness. Though Fili's hair shines golden in the sun and Kili's eyes are the envy of every malachite her children are not hers to keep and to hoard away from life. She has noticed the signs in herself. Though she is a good steward; king-behind-the-king while Thorin takes care of the fieldwork occasionally people petition to leave the Blue Mountains and she has to dig her nails into her palms to keep from reaching for her hammer, to keep from throwing the ungrateful wretches into the stocks as the Durin family folly whispers. “You are my people. Mine are your crafts, your hearts, your bones. You cannot leave me.”

She knows her brother better than anyone, knows every unprotected place so she doesn’t say the words and lets him go. She lets them all go.

\- - -

"Be careful, thorn-in-my-side." She says thickly.

“I plan to be a fatal one to the dragon!" He grins, more alive that Dis has seen him in years and on the day he leaves he lets her braid his hair and pack him a surcoat of blue silk, the kind mother used to wear and they would try on in the diamond-rimmed mirrors of Erebor, so certain that they would one day be Queens.

**Author's Note:**

> Zazz once looked over at me and said "All I want out of Hobbit fandom is Lady!Thorin." I was a bit flabbergasted, Thorin always seemed like a such a hypermasuline bloke and then I realized my thinking was too narrow and the prompt gave me a great chance to explore different ways gender could work in Dwarf culture. So here you go, a variant where Thorin and Dis are both biologically female but dwarves are all 'he' until they have children at which point you get a nifty pronoun switch as an award for perpetuating the species. Also I got to write Dis. I like her, someone had to have inherited the common sense in that family.


End file.
